what heaven is
There was a park around the corner from the house I grew up in. There was a small swing set and two slides. One big red one, and a green one that was slightly less intimidating. Sometimes, after dinner, my dad would take my sister and I’s hands, and walk us over. We’d run to grab our own swings.
“Dad, can you push us?!”
“But not too high.” I’d tell him.
“Ready?”
He’d pull our swings back.
“Three…”
I shut my eyes. We’re suspended in the air, but my dad is still holding on to us.
“Two…”
My small hands grasp the chains tighter and tighter. I start to laugh. He hasn’t let go yet.
“ONE!”
And as the sun would set in suburbia, he lets go, and I’d watch as my little feet would touch that cloudless, golden sky.
-
“So.” My spiritual friend smiles. “When are you leaving?”
My spiritual friend knows. Me leaving Italy was an idea I had been toying with since January, but an idea I had only told two friends about back home.
“The timing of it all is really something. I met him almost exactly two years ago to the date. Now, he’s gone from the bar, and now my visa is almost done. I’m spending the last few months here in my friend’s apartment, the first apartment I stayed in when I got to Rome two Aprils ago. I can’t help but feel like…it’s all connected”
“It is, Emily.” She tells me. “It’s divinity.”
It always begins in April.
-
“Can you promise me something else?”
That night in January. I’m back at the bar, tears forming in my eyes. I’ve told him how I’ve felt, how I’ve always felt. And he’s made me promise to go to Milan.
“When you have the opportunity to leave, you have to take it. Every opportunity for a new experience that comes to you, promise me that you will take it, promise me that you will go.”
-
“You know there’s a version of your mom that’s always with you.” She tells me as she shuffles a few cards.
“But it’s interesting. It’s not who she was when she was on this earth, but it’s almost like… it’s the version of the woman she always wanted to be.”
My eyes start to water. I put my hand over my heart and breathe.
“Can you believe that’s my daughter?” She’s saying to me. She’s in awe of you.”
-
I call my friend who’s apartment I’m staying at. It’s a 5-hour difference where she is, and I’m thankful she is always ready to talk.
“I’m starting to realize something. Why he always told me to go.”
“Because there’s always been more out there for you. And he knew that. There’s always been so much more.”
-
It’s past midnight and I open the gates to the apartment complex. It’s a clear night. The stars are out. My heels keep getting stuck in the cobblestones, so I’m forced to move slower.
I look out into the courtyard.
“It’s a beautiful place.” He looks around and tells me.
“It is. It’s not mine though.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s still beautiful.”
A trellis and gardens of roses. Black cats who wander. I come outside to sit and read in the sun.
In our writing group, we talk about love and death. And how both concepts are intertwined, because it is the unexplainable. The unknown. The things we can’t prepare ourselves for. The surrender of everything we thought we knew, and everything we think we know.
I think to fall in love is to let ourselves die a little bit. And it’s really in those instances where we have a chance to meet God. Whoever or whatever God has become to you.
And when I cry. When I cry out of longing and out of pain and out of grief. Out of all the love that I have felt and given away. And out of all the love that I have had to keep for myself, I realize that maybe this is what Heaven is. To let ourselves love, to let ourselves be loved, and to let past versions of ourselves die.
-
“Karmic connections. Karmic partners.” She tells me. “Souls who were together in a past life, and who were destined to meet in this one. But these two souls...they have to let go of old stories. Old ways of thinking, old ways of being. It’s the only way they can move into who they were always destined to be.”
This love. It existed before us, and it will exist after us.
“And Emily, in a past life…he was very controlling of you. And in this one…he had to learn how to let you go.”
To let ourselves love, to let ourselves be loved, and to let past versions of ourselves die.
-
“Tears are a sign your heart is healing.” My dad tells me.
“But you know what scares me? When they stop. Because the tears let me know that it meant something.”
“Oh, but Emily. It doesn’t mean that the love goes away. It’s almost like your body is signalling to your heart. It’s saying: ok, we’ve learned and we’ve understood. For now. And those tears, they might come back. But they won’t be enveloped in so much pain. In so much hurt. And in so much longing.”
-
The unknown is a beautiful, beautiful place. It can be lonely, but it is beautiful.
It is where I feel the most myself.
My spiritual friend tells me that my innocence is my superpower.
We were all born free. I want to tell those who have let themselves be convinced that they are not.
And I am still that little girl on the swing set.
-
There are 4 lemons in a bowl. A glass of water beside my bed. There’s a neighbour who practices the violin every evening at 5 pm. And when I look out my window, I find comfort in the white sheets that are hanging to dry in the sun.
“So what’s next?”
I give my routine answer: “I don’t know.” But this time, I really do mean it.
“Life on the run.”
“Who’s running?”
He smiles. “Both of us.”